Cry the Child
by Blue Ocean
Summary: *One Shot* Two students plot to steal back a confiscated camera, but reality does irreparable damage to their plans.


Disclaimer: Harry Potter is a work of JK Rowling. The author claims no ownership over the concepts, characters, or plot of this story. No profit was taken from this story. 

He tumbled out of the fireplace, right on time. He stood up and dusted himself off, looking around the poorly lit room. The firelight gave eerie life to the shadows that hid behind the furniture, the lamps, and the trophies of hunts long gone by mounted on the wall. His shadow particularly seemed almost too alive as it bounced back and forth across the opposite wall, jovial at his discomfort. Shadows. He had never greatly appreciated them. He had heard that there were wizards that charmed their shadows to do their bidding. He would rather charm his away. 

His brother was not there. 

Annoyed, Richard sat down in one of the recliners to stare at the fire. He considered if he had heard his brother wrong. Perhaps he had said two in the morning, not one? No, it was impossible. If someone was late or not on schedule between the two of them, it was always his brother. Richard was not late. Mark was the goof-off. 

Ten minutes passed. Richard grew tired of watching the fire and decided to have a look around. His brother, by being late, had sacrificed whatever right to privacy he had had. Wand out, "_Lumos._" A faint glow, not too bright, shone from the end of his wand, guiding his way. 

First the kitchen. He turned right at the exit to the sitting room, glancing left first. Upon entering what could have been a five star chef's paradise (his father had provided well for the brothers), Richard was completely unsurprised to find piles of junk food and beer cans littering the counters. _Doesn't he at least have a maid or . . . something?_ Clearly not. Richard picked his way carefully through the trash on the floor, not wanting to ruin his shoes with left-over pizza cheese all over their soles. 

Bedroom, next. The stairs began in the magnificent semi-theater that was Mark's living room. That too, appeared to have fallen victim to Mark's slovenliness, and the view out the windows, though normally magnificent, overlooking the ocean from cliff side where the house was built, was obscured by the pitch dark outside and useless to Richard. He climbed the stairs quietly, feeling that, though no one was around, he would be intruding upon the building's sleep if he made any noise. 

He stopped outside of his brother's bedroom, hearing noise within. Snoring. Someone was snoring in his brother's room, and he was willing to bet five galleons that he knew who it was. "_Finite incantatem_," snuffing out the light. Someone was going to pay for making him wait. Richard gave his eyes a moment to get used to the dark, then quietly opened his brother's door. Moving by feel, he snuck up to the bed. He stopped close to his brother's head, taking his wand out again, and smiling to himself. This was going to be fun. 

Whispering, he spoke the key: "_Sono declamito_." The wave of sound shook the house as if something solid had struck it in the side. This had the unfortunate effect of awakening Mark quite violently, which resulted in a fist to Richard's face. 

"Ow! Hey, watch what you're hitting!" 

"Richard? Richard!" 

"It's me! Stop it! 

Mark stopped thrashing. Richard heard him grabbing for something on the nightstand. "_Omnis lumos_," and all the lights came on. The image of his brother that greeted Richard was less than happy. 

"What the hell was that?" 

"Just a little joke . . ." 

"Quit with the jokes. You're normally too serious and now, just when you shouldn't, you pull a damned prank– " 

Richard pulled back, stunned, for a moment, then responded furiously, "You want to talk about not being serious enough, why don't you look at yourself? You were supposed to be downstairs fifteen minutes ago." 

"Whatever," Mark said carelessly. "You're the younger brother, you're supposed to wait for me, or did you forget the inheritance?" 

Richard's expression darkened. "Shut up about that. Good thing for you Dad didn't choose who would receive it on merit," but Mark had already turned his back, and appeared not to be listening. He threw on a black cloak, which was very like the one his little brother had on, and pulled the hood up. 

"All right, then. I'm ready. You?" 

"Let's go." 

"So, tell me the plan again." 

Richard looked back at him. "It was you who wanted to do this. If you don't know every step of what we're going to do by now, then we'd best call it off before one of us gets hurt or, worse, caught." 

"OK, then tell me if I've got it right. We're going to portkey there, you'll weave your sightless-soundless shield. From then, we've an hour to get back my camera, and, if possible, the film too. As soon as we've got the stuff, we portkey out. No one knows the better. The camera and the film are probably in the basement, if he hasn't destroyed the film yet." 

Richard nodded slowly, and sighed as they walked down the stairs. He was disgusted with himself. "I can't believe that I'm doing something this stupid. I normally leave this kind of thing up to you." 

"C'mon you already agreed to it!" 

Richard stopped, thinking harder for a moment. Was it really worth it, just to actually do something with his brother? "I'm not sure. It's just too dangerous. We could get killed." 

"No, you know lethal traps are illegal. If we do get hurt, it won't be anything that can't be repaired in short order, and I need my stuff. I had a bet!" 

Richard sighed, knowing he would probably regret it. "All right. Here's the key." Richard put his hand on his brother's shoulder, and Mark mimicked the gesture. He held out the portkey, just a simple green disk that might have come from a set of poker chips, and said the spell key that activated it: "_Operor_." He felt a tug behind his stomach pulling him forward, and before a second had passed, he slammed onto the ground in the middle of a forest. Richard collected himself for a moment, catching his balance. 

To Mark, he said, "Light your wand, all right?" 

"_Lumos._" 

"Good." For a moment, he just breathed and looked around, letting his eyes and ears adjust to the forest and the dim light cast from the wand. The fingers of light only reached ten or fifteen feet into the surrounding trees before they were lost in the darkness. Not good visibility, but there was probably nothing out there to attack the pair. It was what lay beyond the edges of the forest that worried him, not what was within. 

"Let me weave the spell, then we'll go." Richard reached up with his hand, allowing himself to feel the magic around him. His perception of time slowed down, and he began drawing the magic together to create a shield for him and Mark to walk under. Moody's house would have all kinds of detection devices that would alert Moody whenever anyone was planning on entering his house, or if someone who bore him ill will was in the vicinity. Or, more to the point, they could detect if anyone was nearby who wanted to steal something from him, which was exactly what they were here to do. 

Richard let himself sink completely into the weaving of the spell. It had to be strong, able to catch any kind of emanations of intent, purpose, or identity that came from their minds and seal them up or scramble them. Not a hard spell to weave, but enjoyable nonetheless. Richard wondered why more people didn't pursue the ability that he had begun to learn and master. It was so much _finer_ and more precise than casting spells with verbal keys. 

He was done in a moment. To Richard, the greatest thing about weaving spells was the way you could do so much in so little time. Because he could slow his perception of time when he was weaving, work that seemed to take hours only took seconds. No matter the complexity of the spell, the most it could conceivably take to weave it was five seconds, not much longer than most verbal keys took to speak. 

"Done already?" Mark grinned at him. "No one's as good as you at this stuff, Rich." Richard smiled by way of acknowledgment. _He's Bsing me, that's all, it doesn't mean anything_. 

"Quit flattering me. We'd better go. I'd rather not have to put the shield together again close to his house. It'd be harder. We've got about an hour." Mark nodded and began picking his way through the woods. Richard looked all around, keeping an eye out for anything big and alive in the vicinity. His weaver-sight could pick the life signatures of any living creatures, the currents of air and heat, and even the textures of magic in the soil underfoot. With a little effort, he could watch as the shield he had just woven caught his thoughts and scrambled them to simple random interference in the air just feet above his head. No detector would be able to make any sense out of that. 

They made good time. They were a half-mile from Moody's house when they set out, just further than the range of his detectors (Richard had surveyed the area earlier, scrying from a distance what he could of Moody's defenses). The woods were not particularly verdant, so the undergrowth was at least manageable. Mark cut the back of his hand on some thorns, but insisted that he would be OK, and so they moved on through the dark night. 

They reached the edge of the woods with about forty minutes left. "Lights off, then," Mark stated. His wand darkened at his command. "I'm taking the point. We'll stop at the gate, right?" 

Richard nodded his assent. Moody's house lay across the street, huge and forbidding. It was built of dark stone of some sort, and was more of a mansion than anything else, though not a particularly inviting one. A stone wall with small metal spears sticking up out of it at regular intervals circled the house, protecting it from whoever might try to come in by any other way than the gate. The only light in the area was provided by two very bright lamps on either side of the gate. To Richard's weaver-sight, the house was a mass of spells, most of them probably dangerous. Even the wall seemed to be charmed somehow, and the gate too. 

"Be careful of the wall. It's dangerous," Richard whispered to his brother. Mark motioned at him to be quiet and began running across the street that separated the forest from the house, ducked down, commando style. Richard followed close behind. They stopped beside the gate, crouching next to one of the columns that began the wall. 

"Tell me what you see, little bro." 

Annoyed, Richard responded, "Look yourself. You took the class seventh year. Just because I took it in sixth doesn't mean that my sight is any more effective than yours. I'm sure you at least remember how to use weaver's sight." He phrased this last as a question, not a statement. Mark looked vexed, but he sank into the sight and breathed in quietly when he saw the house. Meanwhile, Richard examined the charm that protected the wall. Nasty, that one. If someone tried to climb over, the spikes would begin electrocuting that person, mildly at first, just to deter them. But the spell seemed to be constructed so that the further someone insisted on climbing, the more voltage would be applied. If somehow someone managed to get themselves over, it was all too likely that he would have already received deadly electric shock before he managed to get across. 

Richard took a light breath and began to look for a weak point. Probe . . . probe . . . there! His mind tugged lightly on the activation mechanism of the charm, and the whole thing came undone. Poor work. Must have been subcontractors. Richard would never have pegged Moody for a poor Weaver. 

Meanwhile, Mark seemed to have fixed the problem with the gate. When Richard turned back to him, the gate was open, and the spell that would have detected intruders had been bypassed. 

"Good one," Richard whispered. Mark nodded and put his finger up to his mouth. Richard had never seen his brother this tense before. _Leave it to a Slytherin to get all uptight when they're after something they want_. 

The brothers entered the gate, and closed it softly behind them. No going into the yard, so plan B was out. Richard's weaversight revealed that the plants out there were far too animate for it to be safe. There was no spell he could weave or cast that would protect them from the mobile vegetation that surrounded the house and the noise it would make if it attacked Mark and Richard. Stick to the driveway. The house was another fifty yards down the lane they were on. Short, stubby pillars marked the path on either side. Each seemed to have a ward of some sort on it; not a detector, not a trap, so neither Richard nor Mark were inclined to stop and examine them to see what they did. They had wasted ten minutes on the gate, and if the going thus far was any indication, they were going to have trouble finishing and getting out before their time was up. 

The blood pounded in Richard's ears as they sprinted that next fifty yards. Mark was right. It _was_ a rush to do something illegal. No doubt you could get yourself killed doing it, but it was still fun. Though Richard was the brains of this particular operation, Mark had far more experience. Hogwarts had prepared Mark well in the art of doing bad things and getting away with them. Richard never indulged in such activities, for he had his reputation as a Ravenclaw to worry about. Mark, on the other hand, as a Slytherin man, was almost expected to carry out pranks, especially on the Gryffindors. He had pulled some good ones before he graduated last year, even one or two on master pranksters Fred and George Weasley. He had gotten his own for those on the retaliation, though, and he had lost Slytherin a lot of points in the process. 

Whatever his last prank had been, he had taken it one step too far. Apparently, he had entered the Prefect's bathroom while the female prefects had been in the bath. Then he did something that involved his camera and a whole lot of furious, scantily clad girls. Somehow, one of the Hufflepuff prefects had gotten her wand and stunned him before he could make his getaway. Moody, who had taken over as Slytherin's head of house, had disciplined Mark severely and taken the camera. Repeated attempts to win it back by post had failed. Mark had told Richard all this two nights ago when he requested his help to get the camera back. 

Richard had secretly felt elated by the idea of helping his brother on one of his frequent clandestine operations. His brother was a year older and up until now had not included him in the activities in which he and the other seventh year Slytherins participated. Now was his chance to shine. Outwardly, Richard had taken his brother's request with the stoic aspect for which he had become known. Showing emotion was weak. Ravenclaw meant smart, not weak. 

Richard had done the bulk of the work for the "Project" as he and his brother had begun calling it. He had taken a scry sphere that his father had given him to have a look at Moody's house, he had made the portkey, and he had planned the timing of the operation, even going to far as to design a spell to protect them from Moody's specific brand of detection. This operation was his baby, and he wanted it to go off smoothly, for the sake of his brother and for the sake of the things that they might do together in the future. 

Something caught Richard's eye as he sprinted past one of the columns. He slowed and went back to take a closer look. Mark, hearing Richard's feet stop running, did the same, and turned with an exasperated look on his face. Richard did not see this, since he was hunched over by one of the columns, peering at the dim lettering on the column, wondering if it was important. It read: "Woe to him who comes by night or in the name of evil." Richard snorted. _Empty threats are even weaker than no threats at all_, he thought. Richard stood up and ran back to where Mark was standing. 

"It's nothing," he signaled with his hands. Mark shrugged and turned, continuing the run down the driveway. Their feet fell softly, not making any noise. They stopped where the driveway circled around, about five feet from the front door of the house. 

Mark whispered, "You keep a lookout, I'll weave the door." 

"You sure? I'm better." 

"Shaddup, I said I'd handle it," then, "Wait! What is that?" 

Richard saw it too. Some kind of presence was there, under the ground around the side of the house. It was coming toward them, and beginning to surface. 

"You need to weave something!" Mark whispered fiercely, panicked. 

Richard fished the diamond out of his pocket. It was one thing to weave a simple emanation scrambler on his own power. But to make himself invisible and absolutely silent required a great deal of energy, energy that Richard did not have within. Fortunately, he had planned for this eventuality, and the diamond would provide all the energy he needed. And so he went to weaving. Hours seemed to pass as he put the spell together, designing the magic so that no sound could leave a small sphere around the brothers, and so that light would pass right through the space they occupied. In reality, it took less than a second, and when the weave was done, he activated it with the diamond. Everything went dark as the already dim light in the space around them was redirected. 

"All right, we can talk normally, for now," he said to his brother. 

Mark breathed out. "What happened to the light?" 

"I built the weave so that it would send the light around us. It's also absorbing all the sound we make. Use your weaversight to see out." As he commanded his brother, so he did himself. The creature under the earth, upon less hurried inspection, seemed to be some kind of giant worm. One malevolent eye and the corner of its mouth poked out of the ground not twenty feet from where the two young men were standing. Seeing and hearing nothing, though, the creature turned back around the side of the house and began digging deeper into the earth. 

"How long will the shield last?" 

"The diamond wouldn't power it much more than a minute, but I'm about to turn it off. That thing is gone. I'll keep the lookout for the worm, and you handle the door. Whisper now." 

"OK," Mark responded, dropping his voice back down. 

Richard clamped down on the power supply, allowing the spell to unravel around them. The light came back. Mark stood up and walked slowly toward the door, leaving Richard again on the lookout. Though with his eyes, Richard continued the lookout, his mind and his weaversight probed the door right with Mark. His brother was none too good at unweaving spells, despite the success that he'd had at the gate. 

The door was sturdy, reinforced by several structural spells that would make it nearly impossible to break open by brute strength. As for the locking mechanism, it was unfriendly. The main lock was none too complex, but if magical tampering were detected by the other charms on the door, a much more difficult ward would fall into place, one that no simple "_Alohamora_" spell would open. Still, Mark could probably handle it. Probably. 

Mark paused for a moment, two feet back from the door, studying the spells that locked it. Inexplicably, he bent down to brush some dirt off the doormat. He stayed there, looking at it, probably reading something. Richard started, detecting a shift in the magic behind the door. _Something I didn't see._ Mark had activated something. 

At the same time, Mark whispered, "Hey, look, Rich." The magic was changing faster now, moving with ferocious speed. Richard started to weave against it, at the same time opening his mouth to warn his brother. "The message on the doormat is chang--" Too fast, the magic was changing too fast. Richard's body was standing up, whirling around seemingly in slow motion, warning coming from his mouth, but not fast enough. His weaving raged against the magic even now erupting from the ground below Mark. 

Chink! "Uuuhhhh . . ." 

Not fast enough, not strong enough. Richard's eyes arrived on Mark in time to see three wickedly sharp lances of ice protruding in a horrible triangle from his brother's chest, which was now facing him. He must have seen it too and tried to turn around and get away. Blood slicked, the ice shattered, releasing Mark's body to fall back, opening the holes so the blood could rush out. Mark did not stop himself. He landed heavily beside the welcome mat, whose words now glowed brightly, tinted red through the liquid that had so recently covered it: "The blood of the evil shall be spilt on this ground." 

Richard blasted the weavings in front of the door with sheer power, effacing them from existence. The house's core defenses recognized the intrusion. Worse, Moody had awakened. Richard ran to his brother, who lay dying. 

"Mark!" he cried. The house was alive now, the magic knew they were here, knew of the threat. It was coming. He had only seconds. 

Mark opened his mouth, but no words came out. His lungs were punctured; but not just punctured: ruptured, holed, ruined. He tried a second time, then stopped, instead mouthing the words. "Leave me – run!" His eyes were scared but his face was controlled. This is nothing, it seemed to say to Richard, even as his eyes cried out, "I'm dying, I'm dying!" 

Richard left his brother, lying there. 

He ran. He sprinted out the gate, pausing only in front of it to leave an incredibly destructive trap for anything that was foolish enough to walk through the gate. He poured his shock into it, but had no rage or anger to temper the spell. It was too soon, too much adrenaline. Creatures coming, even now to track him. He did not wait to see what form they would take. He could not fight them now, drained as he was of almost all his magical energy. 

He sprinted across the street and into the woods, keeping in his mind the distance he needed to go, one half mile, before he could portkey out. Run, run, run. Behind him, the earth shook as an explosion rocked the mansion. He grinned through his tears. _See how you like it_. The thorns cut him on the way back, more vicious at higher speeds. He made the half mile and 'ported out. 

He arrived back in Mark's home, alone. He had never thought, in his wildest dreams, that he would come back alone. Surprise. He was here without his brother. He fell to his knees, catching his breath. He couldn't stop now, he needed to move. They would pick up the signature of two people, surely they would. There would be signs, blood-prints from his shoes that they could track. They could track his magic. He needed to disappear until the track grew cold. Ten minutes. Ten minutes in this house then he needed to be gone. Ten minutes and then gone. 

---***--- 

The next day, the Daily Prophet had a small mention of the incident in it: "_Famed Auror Alastor Moody's house was attacked yesterday by Death Eaters. Ministry authorities say that two magical signatures were detected portkeying into and out of the area. Traps set by Moody, who last year served as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, killed one of the two Death Eaters, one Mark Macnair, as he attempted to enter the house. His accomplice escaped after doing 20,000 galleons worth of damage to Moody's estate. The portkey that the other perpetrator used was tracked back to Macnair's house, where authorities lost the magical signature of the other suspect. Mark Macnair is survived by his brother, Richard, whose whereabouts at this time are unknown. Macnair's father and mother were killed last year in a raid on a Death Eater cell in Manchester._

_In other news, the legalization of deadly traps and pitfalls is coming closer to reality as news of attacks by Death Eaters sweep the country. The attack on Moody's house illustrates the effectiveness of lethal force against an attacker, and the Ministry feels that it would add to the security of the general populace if weapons such as these were put in the hands of ordinary wizard-folk."_

A/N: Thanks very much to Laura for betaing this, it would be really ugly, not just a little bit, were it not for you! 


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